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organs themselves. In size and complexity, the nerve
pathways carrying the primary sensory information to the
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cortex are among the less important connections of the
brain. To be sure, the environmental input is necessary:
when you shut your eyes, vision promptly ceases. But this
effect itself may be heavily dependent upon the operation of
habit routines. We are all absolutely and automatically
certain that vision must cease when we close our eyes, and
would be profoundly confused, (if not shocked into
psychosis!), were it to be otherwise, even for a few
seconds.
There is a computer analogy that could be made in
the attempt to account for the curious facts of neural
reciprocating connectivity, that the signaled area must send
back a return signal indicating that it has received
information, like two modems do as they talk to each other.
But this would not explain why return pathways are so much
larger. I would propose that something much more interesting
is taking place. In the case of the nerve pathways from the
thalamus to the primary sensory cortex areas (and back
again) for the various sensory modalities, I believe it is
useful to hypothesize that a reverberation is being
established with the two-way signaling, and that this
reverberation is a dynamic informational entity having
holonomic properties.
The thalamo-cortical reciprocating nerve connections
set up for each sensory domain a dynamic reverberating
holoprojection of information, which is constantly updated
and modified with the newly arriving signals from the
sensory organs. It would require a much higher density of
nerve pathways to set up and maintain such reverberation
than to feed in the flux of newly arriving ENV data, thus
explaining the relative importance of the brain connections
between the sensory receptors, the thalamus, and the areas
of the sensory cortex. The suggestion of similarity to the
projection of a holographic image is intentional, for I
believe that, not only are the mathematical principles which
predict and describe optical holography applicable to memory
storage, but also to the ongoing operation of many of the
systems of the brain. In comparison to optical holography,
it can also be maintained that the relation between a given
unitary nerve signal (the electrical action potential of a
neuron) and the overall holoprojection to which it
contributes, is analogous to the relation between the
unitary nature of one grain of photoemulsion making up a
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hologram (the "photograph" of the interference patterns
produced in optical holography), and the resulting projected
holographic image. The single grain of emulsion on the
photographic plate may only be either "on or off" like the
neuron, yet it theoretically represents the entire
holographic projection, (16) albeit with a resolution of
zero. It is the same for a single action potential: it
represents the entire holoprojection, but with zero
resolution.
Someone familiar with holography would certainly
ask, but how and where are interference patterns produced,
certainly any holonomic process implies their existence, for
it implies the interference of two or more signals? Dropping
one pebble into a still pond produces concentric waves, but
dropping two pebbles produces an interference pattern
between the two sets of waves. So it may be with the nerve
signals of the brain. It is well known that neurons in their
various nerve pathways have a background rate of firing
which, for all intents and purposes, seems to be merely
random noise. Here is pebble number one. Pebble number two
(in the case of the primary sensory holoprojections), is the
impinging signal from ENV (of figure 1), the signal coming
from the sensory receptors.
Thus the resulting holoprojection is the product of
a dynamic interference pattern resulting from at least two
distinct signals, and is amenable to expression as
mathematical transform coefficients analogous to the
mathematical operations which describe optical holography.
In the nerve pathways maintaining a primary sensory
holoprojection, the microtubules of these neurons record and
dynamically maintain the transform coefficients which
represent the information necessary for the neuron firings
to maintain the reverberation. The coefficients are
constantly updated with the sensory signal from the
environment, which also exists as a transform of the
interference patterns actually received by the sensory
receptors. Thus there are two sets of coefficients
representing the two signals, together they contain the
information necessary to maintain the dynamic holoprojection
in time. It will be seen that even the background firing of
the neurons, the resident signal, is not merely random
noise, for it is generated from the coefficients resident in
the microtubules and represents the holoprojection in
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temporal cross-section. The constant arrival of the ENV
signal produces the dynamic aspect of the primary
holoprojection.(note)
But the combination of signals to produce
interference patterns does not end with the primary sensory
holoprojections, for as I shall explain below,
holoprojections themselves combine and overlap, they become
superimposed under the guidance of certain brain components
so as to produce further interference patterns and thus
further composite holoprojections. It can be seen that the
"processing of information" in the brain is therefore
accomplished using entire simultaneous fields of bound
"data" from several, or even the entirety of all ongoing
processes. The hypothesis of such a process conflicts
radically with the computer, neural network model of the
brain in which the serial processing (in parallel pathways)
of discrete bits of information is the proposed mechanism.
If experimental results begin to confirm the holoprojection
model of brain operation, they will be a significant
argument against the pursuit of strong Artificial
Intelligence as it is presently conceived. Let us see how
the fields of information I have called holoprojections
might function in stages of brain operation beyond the
primary sensory realm. First let us take a closer look at
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